Today we’d like to introduce you to Felicia Liang

Hi Felicia, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

My art practice started as a way to create work that reflected my lived experiences and to make the art that I wanted to see more of in the world. It is a constant exploration of identity and emotions, and how the communities and cultures I’m around uniquely shape them.

I was working full time in corporate after graduating in 2010, and started making art on the side in 2015. I self-published a book about growing up Asian American in 2016, which turned into a solo show at New York’s Pearl River Mart in 2017. I actually drew a lot as a kid through high school, but this art show planted the seed that I could maybe make art an actual career. I continued to build my portfolio while picking up a few client projects along the way, and took the leap into freelance illustration and selling my prints online October 2019.

I moved back home to the Bay Area in 2020, and started to do more in person markets starting in 2022, as the Bay has such a thriving scene for creatives and folks to show their work to an audience wanting to support small businesses. I have expanded my product line, started doing more public speaking, and am ramping up my wholesale businesses to get my products stocked in shops. My business and art is constantly evolving and I’m working on managing my time and energy better, but looking forward to continuing to make work and building community along the way.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

This career path has been a windy road, but all par for the course when working for myself.

Some of the biggest lessons I’ve learned have stemmed from struggles I’ve had and mistakes I’ve made along the way. These lessons include: 1) charge what I’m worth, 2) celebrate wins and not get too hung up on making everyone happy (not everyone will like your work), 3) say yes to things even if you’re scared and don’t know how to do it, 4) say no when you need to, and 5) to be okay making mistakes because you will be making a lot of them. My perfectionism and anxiety have been put to the test since working for myself because the stakes feel so much higher, but I’ve learned to manage and co-exist with them.

I would say that I’m currently struggling with time management (and trying not to work all the time), and finding a balance between making work for me and making work to also sell. For the longest time, I have been able to sell personal work that I made into prints. But now that retail has become a larger part of my income, to sustain this growth, I have to be more mindful of what customers want as well. I was very used to just making work for me, and while that’s still a guiding principle in my art practice, I need to shift some of my thinking as the business side of my work evolves.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

I use art to document what’s important to me and capture what home feels like, no matter where I am. My storefront drawings of Chinatowns spanning New York City to the Bay Area celebrate the neighborhoods that helped me embrace my Asian-American identity. Small businesses make up the fabric of the communities I am a part of, so some of my artwork is my way of reflecting that love back. My colored pencil journal illustrations about Taiwan capture my own homecoming with my Taiwanese-American identity and finding community and a sense of home abroad.

Color also plays a huge role in my work. I gravitate towards bright, earthy tones, particularly in my food illustrations and cityscapes. I try to weave in cultural storytelling into my art and love adding in as many elements as I can into every piece in the hopes that people see a new detail or feel something different each time they see it.

In addition to color and maximalist tendencies, I think what has helped both my art practice and business has been the specificity in my work. Simply by infusing what’s true to me sets me apart. I found that as I’ve gotten more specific with my work, I’ve actually captured an even wider audience. Not all my work hits this mark, but I think my strongest pieces (and oftentimes, my best selling prints) do just that.

At the end of the day, I’m most proud when my work feels both true to me and resonates with others. I’ve been able to meet so many cool people from all walks of life when sharing my art online and in person, and being able to build community no matter where I am makes me so happy.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?

There are too many people who have helped me get to where I am today. Finding community and building relationships have been key in sustaining my business and art practice.

At the start of my art career, I connected with a few illustrators on Instagram when I began sharing work there, grabbed coffee with them, and they were generous with answering my questions. They helped me learn about the different types of illustration jobs I could get, and basics like looking over contracts, helping with rates, and understanding my rights as an artist. Christina Chung, Julia Kuo, and Jocelyn Tsaih have been a huge help when I first navigated the illustration world.

Since making work about being Taiwanese American, I’ve been connected with other Taiwanese artists, cultural workers, and those in the food industry around the country. The support from them, as well as the larger Asian American community, has meant a lot to me. The team behind Taiwanese American Professionals in San Francisco have been big supporters (shout out to their president, Jennifer Chen), as well as HoChie Tsai and Leona Chen from TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Angie Lin and Tony Tung at Good to Eat Dumplings, Lisa Cheng Smith and Lillian Lin at Yun Hai, Cynthia and Jennifer Huie at On Waverly, and Joanne Kwong and Angela Tung at Pearl River Mart.

When I started to sell more at craft markets, I met more creatives and entrepreneurs working across different mediums. I’ve been inspired by so many of them, and it’s nice having people I can easily talk shop with or just commensurate with. I’ve also been able to meet and immediately connect with clients and collaborators at these events, confirming the magic of community in the creative industry. Some folks I want to mention include Chanamon Ratanalert, Paulina Hoong, Sandy Lopez, Christina Hu, and Samantha Leung.

All these connections have helped me grow my practice, and word of mouth and referrals have been a big part of how I get client work.

And lastly, I have to add my partner, Kevin. He is at all my events and helps out with a lot of the operational tasks, which has offloaded some of the stress so I can focus on making art behind the scenes and connecting with customers at these in-person events. I love that everyone knows who he is at my events. It’s a lot to manage this business mostly on my own and I wouldn’t be here without everyone I’ve mentioned above (and so many more!).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.felicia-liang.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefliang/